


Just to See You Smile

by Karios



Category: Leverage
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Multi, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7909618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/pseuds/Karios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker wants to make Eliot happy. Hardison is talked into it. Eliot doesn't know what he's in for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just to See You Smile

**Author's Note:**

> For the bingo square Making Someone Smile.

“Eliot doesn't smile much.” Parker informs Hardison on her way to pour herself a bowl of cereal. The hitter in question isn’t in the building and they don't have a job so the two of them are eating alone.

Parker is big on vague pronouncements of her thoughts in general, so Hardison doesn't think much of this particular observation. “Well, yeah, it doesn't really go with the scary bad guy beat’em up persona if he went around grinning all the time.”

“Murderous clowns scare people. Other people,” she’s quick to add the last bit. And Hardison laughs.

“They're smiling all the time,” continues Parker, moving to sit on the counter. “So you can smile and still be scary.”

Hardison concedes the point. “I guess that's true, baby girl. Maybe Eliot just doesn't have as much to smile about.”

“See?” says Parker as though Hardison had taken a very long time to reach an obvious conclusion.

“Oh, you're worried about Eliot.”

Parker shoots him her best duh face.

“Eliot’s fine,” he insists trying to convince himself as much as Parker. Okay, so maybe the last couple of jobs were a little rough in the hitter department, and maybe they were all still adjusting to a post Nate and Sophie existence, but it doesn't mean anything was wrong, does it?

Maybe it does. Parker was no grifter, that much was obvious, but she seemed to understand their hitter on a level the others were never given access to. “What you wanna do about it?” he asks her after a minute.

“Have a contest,” declares Parker, setting her spoon in her bowl.

“A contest?”

“Yeah. First one to make Eliot smile wins. It's like an achievement on one of your games only in real life.”

The attempt at an analogy seals the deal for him. “Alright, girl. You on.”

“I’m on what?”

“It means I’m agreeing to the idea, Parker.” Hardison doesn't really think it will do a lot of good, but he's willing to try because it matters to Parker.

*

At first nothing changes, save Parker scribbling down notes when Eliot comes in for dinner. The first attempt happens the next morning, and scares Hardison half to death.

That morning, Hardison wakes to the smell of ash. He flails out of bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets that sends him crashing to the floor. He jumps into a pair of sweatpants because even if everything is going up in flames Eliot has made it clear that no one is allowed to go around without pants on. Hardison thinks that means he walked in on something once, but generally he’s cool with following anything Eliot decrees because if Hardison were to be trapped in a burning building, Eliot would go in and get his sorry trapped behind.

It takes him until he is looping the rabbit around the tree tying his drawstring  to realize if the building were on fire there’d probably more alarms, and smoke and generally heat. Still it is a relief when he stumbles into the next room to discover Parker at the stove flipping pancakes.

At least he thinks the couple of black at the edge discs she’s shoving onto plates were supposed to be pancakes. He grabs the orange juice from the fridge and pours a glass not paying much attention to anything until Eliot plunks down next to him, grumbling. “Smiley-face pancakes, what am I, four years old?”

Hardison glances over at the undercooked bacon smile, the puffs of whipped cream serving as hair and chocolate-drop eyes, and he bites his bottom lip to keep from bursting out laughing.

“You’re going to make Mr. Pancake Face sad, Eliot,” pouts Parker, and Hardison loses hold of his composure completely.

Both of his teammates glare at him. “Did you put her up to this?” accuses Eliot, waving the limp bacon in Hardison’s direction.

“What? Me? No. I had nothing to do with this. I was asleep, man.”

Eliot bites into the offending pancakes. Immediately, he complains about the presence of Bisquik and canned whipped cream in his kitchen. He gets up, abandoning his barely-touched meal, but his griping about “bargain-basement grub” reaches Hardison’s ears even from down the hall.

Parker shrugs and takes over Eliot’s chair. She piles her pancakes atop Eliot’s, digs in, unaffected by his rejection. “Your turn,” she deadpanned, popping an orange slice ear between her teeth.

*

Hardison for his part decides on a similar, but subtler approach.

“Let's go fishing.”

Eliot looks up from his book. “What?”

“Let’s fish,” Hardison says again.

“I heard you. I’m just trying to figure out why you’d volunteer to be outdoors, doing anything that requires manual labor.”

“I, uh, have this family reunion,” starts Hardison.

Eliot’s confusion hardens to a glare.

“That I’m infiltrating,” is as far as it gets before Eliot cuts him off completely.

“I don’t buy it.” The hitter picks up his discarded novel, and the hacker is forced to switch tactics.

“Okay, you want to know the truth, you really want to know?” Hardison lowers his voice to a whisper. “I want to be gone, outta here, before baby girl decides she wants to make lunch or dinner or darn my socks, or something else from this _Leave It to Beaver_ kick she seems to be on. So let’s go get ourselves some catch of the day.”

That gets Eliot to stick a mark in the book, and get up. “Anything goes wrong and you’re buying me a new pole,” he warns as the door swings shut behind them.

*

“You’re buying me so much more than a new pole.”

“I got that, the first five times you said it.”

When the bickering duo enter Parker is sitting on her head straddling the divide between two cushions so it looks like the couch is eating her hair. “Parker, move,” grumbles Eliot.

With some kind of gymnastics move Parker flips backward off the couch and straightens up. “Fishing didn't go good?”

“Fishing didn't go good,” Eliot mimics. “Try terrible. Hardison was worse than some of the kids there.”

“Hey! I caught something,” Hardison tries to defend himself.

“Yeah, my hat,” agrees Eliot.

Parker laughs so hard she snorts.

“It’s not funny, Parker.” The two men declare in unison.

She tries to stop laughing and slows to loud sputters. “You...Eliot...hat...and the hair.”

“I meant I caught that fish.”

“It doesn't count,” Eliot grinds out slowly, enunciating each word, “if you fall in the damn water after it.”

Parker perks up at that. “You mean you had _to fish_ him out?” She over exaggerates the pun and collapses into another fit of giggles.

*

Hardison doesn't see if Parker makes any more attempts over the next couple of days. He gets a grunted “thanks” when he presents Eliot with the demanded new fishing pole, and the new hat gets slung on the hitter’s head. The third box however makes him look a lot more like when he tried Parker’s pancakes.

“Why?” is all he says, peeling the sweater from the box between two pinched fingers like it's some kind of used tissue.

“A man can't buy another man a gift?” asks Hardison.

“It’s just a little weird is all,” offers Eliot after a moment.

Hardison snatches it back. “Gimme my damn sweater. I’m done. I’m done with this. With all y’all.”

*

And Hardison means it. Then a job gets in the way of all of his free time and he honestly forgets all about it, until one day when Eliot thunders up the stairs, red-faced and wild-eyed. “If one of you doesn't tell me what’s goin’ on in the next ten seconds, I’m going to forget both of you are friends and pound the answer out of you. I’ve had it.”

“W-what do you mean?” Hardison backs away reaches for Parker’s hand and tugs her with him.

“I met a girl downstairs,” he starts icily.

“You like girls,” Parker says, unphased by both Eliot’s murderous glare and the stone-cold terror pouring off Hardison. Has she not seen what Eliot can do to people?

“Not one’s paid to spend time with me!”

“Parker?” Hardison squeaks, too afraid to be embarrassed by the higher octave to his voice, or the fact that he's going to probably wet his pants before this is over.

“What?” she asks. “I don't get it. Eliot always smiles at girls.”

“I’m gonna kill her, Hardison!”

With the kind of bravery that should win the man some kind of medal, Hardison steps between them. “It was a bet, man. She didn't mean anything by it. Honest.”

“A bet about what?” asks Eliot in that deadly calm and quiet voice with an emphasis on deadly that has Hardison taking a step back further out of swinging reach.

“We wanted to make you smile more,” Parker explains, “you’ve been sad and I didn't know how to help.”

They watch as some of the anger evaporates off Eliot’s features.“All the craziness I’ve been through these last two weeks was supposed to make me happy?”

Parker nods vigorously. Hardison agrees. “Yeah man.”

Eliot gives a fake toothy grin so big and wide it must hurt his cheeks. “There. Happy now?”

“No,” Parker says, stepping out from behind Hardison now. “Because that's not a real smile. Because you're not really happy and you're going to leave us like Sophie and Nate and everyone else.” Her voice slowly fades until the last word is barely more than a whisper.

The last of Eliot’s anger melts like the false grin off his face.

Hardison steps over to gather her in his arms. “Parker, he’s not going nowhere. Eliot’s he’s loyaler than a puppy, he is.”

Hardison is grateful when Eliot doesn't object to the comparison, and even more when a big pair of arms wraps around the both of them. “He’s right Parker. You don't have to do anything to make me stay. No breakfast or gifts or girls or anythin’ like that.”

“You promise?” she asks, the words half muffled by shirt.

“I promise.”

“Then you’re not still mad?”

“I’m not mad. Would I be huggin’ you, if I were mad?”

“No?” guesses Parker.

They slowly break apart and Eliot heads to the fridge for a beer. A smile spreads across his face as he pulls open the door.


End file.
